Northern Heads celebrates 60,000 visitors

Northern Heads began as northernheads.com (a very lo-fi website, essentially a proto-blog covering largely Canadian improvisational 'jam' based music) from 2001-2005.   The website was founded by Canadian Luke Bowden and American Abe Robins and might best be described as jambands.com meets The Onion on ketamine.  

After some dark and hairy times Northern Heads was revived by Luke Bowden as a blog at first primarily focused on Detroit Hip Hop.  The notion behind this limited focus at the outset was that there are countless general interest blogs and music blogs out there and the world of music is so vast that once one starts down a path (say Blues from the 1920's) you could literally spend a lifetime trying to understand that little niche.  From an initial focus on the preternatural J Dilla, his protege Black Milk and many in his camp including Elzhi, Guilty Simpson, Sean Price and (Hybrid-era) Danny Brown the scope of coverage has grown.

Gradually the focus of the blog dilated to include its namesake the Grateful Dead, Phish and the immortal Prince - but more importantly progressive improvisational groups such as The Slip (now The Barr Brothers) as well as a variety of Electronic musicians influenced by a deep musicality (The Gaslamp Killer, Flying Lotus etc.).   Swinging to the other end of the spectrum my other area of specialization is Roots and Americana music with a fervent interest in Canadian groups with spine and spirit such as The Golden Dogs and their kin Zeus. 

As a freelance music writer I have always operated on the margins of Canada's nepotistic and clingy world of music journalism.  As a rule I do not feature any music which I am not deeply passionate about- setting a standard of requisite craftsmanship rarely present in the glut of releases pumped out on a daily basis.  Put plainly I listen to all the shit so that you don't have to.

As the New Year approaches we'll be highlighting the best of 2014's releases as well as highlighting long form interviews from the past year originally published on No Depression (the Roots music authority since 1995).  Thanks for reading and coming back - if you don't currently follow the blog please consider following it in the future.  I promise to bring you more music, more diverse music and insights, and more frequent updates over the coming year.

sincerely,

Luke C. Bowden

The National to curate Grateful Dead compilation

In news that (NorthernHeads is reporting) that Pitchfork is reporting pulled from Spinner Canada: The National is working on a new compilation record (similar to their Dark Was The Night albums benefiting AIDS research) of Grateful Dead covers.  Solicited involvement is coming forward from New Weird American groups like Bon Iver and Fleet Foxes.  Also minimalist avant garde composer Steven Reich is involved, who is an old chum of Dead bassist Phil Lesh from his earliest days as a classical trumpet player, composer and early producer of Electronic music. Regrettably Devendorf is also quoted as saying "we're also trying to think of unusual [acts]. (Electronic-douche-scream-prats) Crystal Castles would be awesome." 


The National's bassist Scott Devendorf who is 'shadow curating the record' is quoted as saying "we're just figuring that out right now. Matt Berninger has got to sing it, so we're thinking a Phil song, 'Box of Rain' or 'Unbroken Chain,' something like that," he says. "For us, the frontrunner right now is 'Box of Rain' I think, but we'll see."  Despite being the only true musical equal to Jerry Garcia in the Grateful Dead, Lesh sings a limited number of songs in their catalogue owing to his distinct voice- of those Unbroken Chain which re-emerged in the last years of Garcia's life is a rabid fan favourite both for it's rarity and the depths it's improvisations often plumb.